


Light With a Sharpened Edge

by GettheSalt



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1311418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettheSalt/pseuds/GettheSalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The byproduct of a brilliant mind is that it never shuts up. After watching Donnie Gill be shut up in a S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle to be taken away, Fitz can’t seem to shut his up, nor ignore with the black mood it brings on. After all, this is all on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light With a Sharpened Edge

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to look into Fitzward in a bit of a different way than I have so far. Not established, hiding things (re: feelings) from each other, but I wanted to explore their relationship alongside the romantic potential. Hopefully that worked out.

The Bus was quiet, and that was almost a godsend, at this point. Some people might prefer noise, action, goings-on, to distract them from their thoughts, but Leo Fitz had never been the type to avoid his thoughts. At least, none that were as potent and clinging as these.

If anyone else had access to his head right now, they would probably say that he was being too harsh on himself. That he was overanalyzing, that he was focusing too much on what had happened, rather than letting himself move on. He knew that he could, and would, but at the moment, there was nothing more that he could do but dwell on the image of Donnie Gill’s half-angered, half-grieving face as he was loaded into the S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV to be taken to a transport facility, and then, The Sandbox.

Simmons had picked up on it. Sweet Jemma, who knew him too well for their own good. Knew his mood and knew, roughly, where his headspace was at. He was different from her, and she knew it. When she was in these sorts of moods, she surrounded herself with people. Had done so at the Academy, and still did so on the Bus. He, on the other hand, preferred his solitude. What Fitz preferred was being able to remove himself from everything and everyone, to get his headspace right by himself. He didn’t need someone to sit by and listen to him. He would never fault Jemma for it, but it wasn’t what he needed.

When she had thrown herself out of the plane, he had done the same. He’d retreated to his bunk, and had only opened the door to her, because she was persistent enough not to take a closed door for an answer. This time, though, she wouldn’t be coaxing him to open the door – unless he stayed shut up for longer than she deemed healthy. There was nothing that she could do to influence him right now, she wasn’t at the heart of what was bringing this on. He was.

He, and his stupid advice. The way he’d handed Donnie Gill and Seth Dormer the tools to their own destruction without so much as a second thought. A warning, a cautioning; what did those matter when the words had already fallen out of his mouth and he’d given Donnie all the answers they’d needed? He’d told Coulson, the second they’d stepped onto the Bus, that it had been his fault, and he had yet to take that back.

Maybe it would have helped if someone had said it wasn’t on him, but he doubted it. No one could have said ‘Oh, Fitz, don’t be silly’ and have made it okay. Those words wouldn’t have made him forget that he had successfully put together the broken A-bomb that was Donnie’s weather machine.

But, everyone made mistakes. Everyone thought they were helping, and, as far as anyone at the Academy had known, Donnie Gill was a bit of a loner, bored, but brilliant. He had, as Ward had said, needed a friend. Fitz understood where he’d come from. Fitz had been there himself, when he’d been the one in those dorms. It wasn’t wrong that he’d extended that hand. He’d gone further, tried to get Donnie down to the boiler room, to get him mingling and making friends with the other people there. He’d been trying to help.

“Huh,” he shifted against the wall, moving until he could flop back on his bed, giving the ceiling a flat stare. “Definitely helped, all right.”

It was a good thing that he tended to run when he got into these moods. He was bloody miserable right now. He’d be a damn terror to be around.

Which was, of course, why someone was knocking on his bunk door two seconds after he finished that thought.

Probably Simmons. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in here, but it was probably too long, for her liking. Not long enough, by far, for his. That was the main reason he didn’t say anything, didn’t even shift position on the bed, not willing to risk giving his consciousness away by accidentally smacking his knee off the wall or something. He would have held his breath, if he thought that would change things, make her go away faster.

A minute passed, and he relaxed. There hadn’t been another knock, hadn’t been a ‘Fitz, really, you’re being ridiculous’; as far as he was concerned, he was in the clear. She had gone back to whatever it was that she had been up to, and he was fine with that. It made him at least happy enough, in his black mood, to think of her being well off with the others.  In due time, he’d come out of hiding, but, for now, he had some more thinking to do, and he was happy to stay right here and do it.

Unless that knocking came again, and then a sigh that was definitely too heavy, and not exasperated enough, to be Simmons. Coulson wouldn’t be sighing, and May would have been too quiet for him to have heard her breathing even if he’d had a device pressed to the door. Skye would have been much louder, and Simmons would have already scolded him through the barrier.

That was _just_ what he needed.

Fitz rolled his eyes, suspicions confirmed when the specialist on the other side of the door spoke up, finally. “Fitz? Simmons said you were probably in there, sulking. Her words, not mine.” There was a pause. “Okay, sulking was Skye’s choice of words. Simmons specifically said ‘beating himself up’.” Another pause, this one longer. Fitz was hardly bothered if Simmons had said he was sulking. When he finally did emerge, she would be the first to scold him for sulking over things he couldn’t change if he wanted to, scold him for sulking at not being able to have a do-over.

“ _Are_ you sulking in there?”

Ward, on the other hand…

Heaving a sigh of his own, Fitz sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed and standing to open the door, raising his eyebrows at Ward, schooling his face into as much of a not-sulk as he could, without smiling. “No, I’m not sulking in here, Agent Ward,” he said. “How can I help you?”

Ward had changed out of his suit, into a pair of jeans and one of his black T-shirts from his seemingly endless supply. He looked almost relaxed, half way to unintimidating. Maybe that was what Fitz wanted to see, though, because the last thing he needed, right now, was for Ward to have been sent to drag him out of his solitude. He couldn’t think of any reason why Ward would be here otherwise.

Well, he could. The whole black tone of his mood, however, was making it hard to imagine that was why the older man was here. Besides, even if it wasn’t, Ward’s slowly loosening social constipation didn’t exactly make him the heart to heart type.

That was a lie. Fitz knew that was a lie, he’d been on this plane with Ward and the others for months. He liked to think that he understood most of them, at least a little. Ward didn’t go out of his way to have heart to hearts, but he didn’t shy away from them.

If that was why he was here, now, though, that was going out of his way. He could have easily stayed wherever he’d ended up when they’d taken off, but, instead, he was here. Fitz didn’t pay attention to the tightening in the pit of his stomach, but it happened.

“I was actually kind of hoping for the opposite,” Ward said, looking almost sheepish. “Can I help you?”

The quiet, sincere tone of his voice threw Fitz for a second, and he took that second to mentally plant his feet and try to figure his way through this. “Pretty sure sulking is a one man duty, Ward,” he said, keeping his tone light. He saw the tightening around Ward’s eyes, telling him that he was being just the right amount of difficult.

Good, maybe that’d run him off. He shouldn’t be so mean to Ward, but the mess of emotions that he had towards the other agent, the ones that had hardly been helped by their South Ossetian vacation, wouldn’t be an asset in the mood he was in. He knew that much for sure.

“Fitz, listen,” Ward glanced back, towards the lounge, and then back to him. “Can I come in? I just want to talk, and if you don’t want to talk, you can kick me out, and I’ll go, but I can tell you’re in here, beating yourself up. You don’t have to.” He held up his hands in what Fitz supposed was supposed to be a placating gesture. “But, I’ll step off if you want me to.”

Fitz knew that he should tell Ward to step off. He shouldn’t risk making his emotions any more unstable by having Ward in here. The last thing he should be attempting was juggling his feelings for Ward with his current temper. That didn’t explain why he was stepped aside and shrugging while he waved to the bed.

Ward looked surprised himself, but only hesitated a second before he stepped into the bunk, sitting down at the edge of Fitz’s bed and waiting. Fitz pushed his door closed again and sat down next to Ward, leaving a fair amount of space between them, pushing back until his back was against the wall and he could cross his legs. “So.”

“So.” Ward agreed.

The silence stretched between them for a second, and Fitz resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Ward wasn’t exactly being Dr. Phil, here. He eyed the line of the other’s back, and opened his mouth to say just that, but was cut off by Ward shifting, turning where he sat so that he could see Fitz.

“What’s going on in there?” he nodded towards Fitz, not really indicating where, but Fitz knew he what he meant. In his head, what was going on in his thought process. He shrugged, not making eye contact.

“I wish I had been able to stop Donnie from doing what he did.”

Ward nodded, quiet for a moment. Fitz waited for him to speak again, reaching for his pillow, pushing it down in his lap, giving him something to fidget with, instead of his own hands. “I don’t know if you’re telling me the whole truth, Fitz, but… You know we all wish we’d been able to stop him from doing what he did. Him, and Seth. He was a smart kid, Agent Weaver told us. He had a bright future ahead, and that got destroyed in just a few minutes.”

Fitz nodded. “Yeah, but, you know, he wouldn’t have been able to do it without…” he trailed off, not willing to voice the notion to Ward. Something about the chance of seeing disappointment shuttered behind those eyes stopped him. Ward would be disappointed he didn’t catch on. Fitz could make all the jokes about double digit IQs that he wanted, but Ward wasn’t stupid. Ward probably would have been able to shut his mouth before he handed Donnie the verbal key to simple destruction. Ward had a knack for these things, he could read people. Fitz had just been so thrilled to see the extent of Donnie’s intelligence, of his creativity, that he’d opened his mouth wide enough to insert both feet.

“Without you having solved the problem for him?” Ward finished, quiet. Quiet enough that Fitz looked up, expecting to see disappointment, but instead, what he saw was understanding. “That’s it, right? You’re feeling guilty for helping him solve the problem.”

Fitz nodded, looking back down at the pillow in his lap. “If I hadn’t told him how to solve the power problem, he wouldn’t have gotten around to what he did. He and Seth would still be struggling to make that device work, and we probably would have caught on and stopped them before they worked it out.” He snorted, humorless. “They definitely wouldn’t have. They schemed to get us there just so I could blurt the answer to them like a rookie. And I performed _perfectly_.”

“Hey.”

Ward’s voice was firm, tight, louder than it had been up until this point, and it got Fitz looking up at him quick, jolted out of his monologue. Ward was looking at him hard, eyes narrowed, head shaking to accentuate his words.

“It’s not on you, Fitz. You know, if you hadn’t told them,” he shrugged. “Donnie was smart. Weaver said it, you saw it, hell, I saw it. The kid would have figured it out soon enough, and we would have ended up right back where we were. Maybe not us, specifically, but S.H.I.E.L.D. still would have been dealing with a cadet who was deliberately acting against the agency.”

Fitz thought about Ward’s words for a second, tipping his head to the side. “Yeah, but that’s not how it went, is it? I did tell him. I told him, and that storm endangered people. The whole Academy. Every one of us, you,” he pointed at Ward. “You were right in the middle of it. You would have gone out into it.”

Ward shook his head, interrupting. “No way. I didn’t want to get blown to Oz.”

Fitz tried to fight the smile that brought to his face, and succeeded only after showing his hand. “Not just that, it ruined him. He’s going to be distrusted by S.H.I.E.L.D. for the foreseeable future. And Seth _died_ , Ward. That’s on me.”

Ward nodded, but held up a hand again. “It’s not on you, Fitz. You might have had a hand in it, but, really, it’s on Donnie. Donnie, and Seth. They made their choices.”

“I told them how to do it.”

“And?” Ward asked, a sharp edge to the question. “I told you to go to see Donnie. If I had kept you with us, you wouldn’t have had the chance to try and help him out. By your logic? Everything that happened, that’s on me.”

“But—”

“—Better yet, Agent Weaver’s the one who asked us there. Coulson’s the one who accepted. If they hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have been there to investigate, so I wouldn’t have had the chance to tell you to go see Donnie, so you wouldn’t have had the chance to be manipulated.”

Fitz clenched his jaw. This was infuriating.  “You’re not listening, Ward.”

“No? Because I think you’re the one who isn’t listening.” Ward’s tone was firm, not allowing argument, and he barely waited before he steamrolled on ahead. “You know who we blame before we blame Coulson and Weaver? Donnie and Seth. If they hadn’t acted the way they did, and caused the incident in the pool, Weaver wouldn’t have called us in, and Coulson wouldn’t have accepted. And before even them, you know who we blame? Ian Quinn.”

He fell silent, letting the quiet settle heavy between them.

This was infuriating, and it was all because Ward was right. He was entirely right in what he was saying. Yes, Fitz had expedited everything, but he was probably nothing more than an expediting factor. Donnie _was_ smart. He probably would have gotten there on his own.

“You know I’m right.”

Fitz looked up, catching the bare hint of a smirk on Ward’s face, feeling it tug at him, making him smile back. Bastard.

“Oh, shut up,” he grumbled, lifting his pillow to thump it against Ward’s side. The specialist laughed, reaching over to shove Fitz’s shoulder.

“See, I have more than just the occasional wonderful idea.”

Fitz settled back against the wall again, tugging the pillow back into his lap. “Yeah…” he glanced down at his hands before looking back up at Ward. “Sorry about that, by the way. The Academy, the whole, you know, rivalry thing. Brings out the arsehole in me.”

“Oh, that’s the only time the arsehole in you comes out?” Ward asked, raising his eyebrows, teasing smile in place.

“Oi, watch it,” Fitz warned, smiling, laughing through his words in spite of himself. “I’ve still got a pillow to beat you with, agent.”

“Oooh, scary,” Ward said, lifting his hands and shaking them in a mockery of fear. “How about you come out and beat me at Texas Hold ‘Em instead?”

Fitz’s grin shrank into a softer smile, the idea turning over in his head. Against his better judgment, and his stubborn ways, he felt lighter. The black mood that he’d been wallowing in had abated, if not entirely left, and that was all because of Ward, sitting there, hitting him with bare logic. He felt better, he felt more at peace, and it was all on Ward, and the way he had refused to let Fitz wallow in what was essentially self-hatred.

“Only if you promise not to cry,” he said, moving the pillow off his lap to shimmy to the edge of the bed and stand up. “I don’t think you’d be a very attractive crier.”

Ward huffed a laugh, rolling his eyes and standing. “Yeah, yeah. You talk a big game, but we’ll see who’s on top when this is over.”

Fitz slid open his bunk door, tossing a smirk over his shoulder while he headed for the lounge. “Your delusions are cute, Ward. Come on, let’s not prolong the inevitable.”

Ward shook his head, making a ‘yeah, sure, whatever’ gesture with his hand while he followed along. Fitz turned back to face forward, smiling to himself.

Even if he lost the poker game, Ward had managed to win something today, in that bunk. Probably didn’t know he had, and maybe Fitz’s good mood wasn’t much of a prize, but from where the engineer was standing, it was a huge accomplishment, and one he was quietly thankful for.


End file.
